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Monday, 31 March 2014

Jackie is hosting our challenge today. She has chosen the theme 'You've Been Framed', and she would like to see a prominently displayed frame on your project, this can be stamped, die cut, or made up of other materials, or you could decorate an actual frame.

Sir Stampalot is a retail shop and online website that specialises in stamps, die cutting and paper-crafting goodies. We try to offer exceptional delivery times on your orders as well as keeping our stock fresh, new and exciting! Our dedicated team of card makers means we have a wonderful, inspirational online card gallery with many more cards still to upload! Sir Stampalot ships internationally as well as domestic so why not check us out if you haven’t already – www.sirstampalot.co.uk. Happy Crafting!

I have been drawing since a child and studied graphics at College many years ago, I now work as a Medical photographer part time but my love was always drawing. I started cardmaking about 4yrs ago when I bought my daughter a cardmaking kit which we did together, but I’m afraid I got the bug! My daughter preferred scrapbooking. I then started looking online at other blogs and this then became my passion and I loved sharing my cards with like-minded people. I love stamping and loved finding images, but sometimes I could not find what I wanted so I started to draw myself. This then has become my second addiction and I have never looked back, I love thinking of new images, and its just fabulous to see others take them and make them into beautiful works of art. Long may it continue!

All links are moderated, please be patient whilst I get the chance to check that your link meets the requirements before adding it to the blog. You will add your link as normal, it just won’t appear immediately. Any entry that does not meet the challenge requirement or that does not follow our simple rules will not be published. If you are having issues with any other linking matter please mail me at the address in the side bar

We were pleased to receive so many entries for our first mixed media style challenge. It showed us that there is a place for that type of challenge, and we will hopefully be developing that further later in the year. Sadly one or two entries were not really mixed media in the term that I outlined at the start of the post. Because I realised that there must be some confusion I did allow most of them to stand, but do feel that a few people just saw the words 'anything but a card' and ignored the 'mixed media' part of the challenge entirely. However, we did have some really fabulous entries and Yvonne has had the difficult task of narrowing down the winner and Top 5, and has chosen them as follows:-

Josephine was our hostess for our 'Paper Pricking/Piercing' challenge and she has chosen her winners and Top 5 as follows:-

Our winner this time is an email entry from Monique

A stunning card with beautiful paper embroidery.

You might want to consider starting a blog Monique, because then you could have had bragging rights and displayed our winner's badge!!!

Congratulations to you all, please feel free to display our Winner’s badge or Top 5 badge on your blogs. Would the winners please contact me at the address in the sidebar stating the number of the challenge, the title of the challenge and which prize they have won in the subject line

The winners of both challenges have until 13th April to claim their prize, after which time I am afraid the prizes will be forfeit. As we choose our winners, rather than having a random number thingy to pick them it's too difficult and time consuming to go back again and go through the entries to pick out new winners. Neither, sadly do we have time to chase the winners up.

Monday, 17 March 2014

If you are looking for our current Mixed Media Challenge, Winter and/or Slap It On, please click here. This challenge will run concurrently with the challenge below and both are due to finish midday on Sunday 30th March.I would like to reiterate, however, that the challenge above is a MIXED MEDIA challenge and we did define what we meant by that in the post. Some entrants clearly haven't read the post, sadly!Anyhow onto today's challenge

Our challenge today, hosted by Josephine is Paper Pricking. Josephine would like to see decorative paper pricking. If you want you can stitch the holes you prick, but if you choose to do that, please ensure it's real stitching, not faux (drawn) stitching. Maybe you can make an entire paper pierced pattern?

I coloured my image with my copics. For the Paper Pricking/Piercing theme this challenge, I decided I would stitch the stems of the Lily of the Valley and one of the rose leaves using DMC embroidery floss.

I have used a LOTV stamp for my card and my papers are from the Forever In Time "Purple Passion" paper pack. I have used my new "Pierced Square" Die-namics dies on all my my squares and to cut out my image.

All links are moderated, please be patient whilst I get the chance to check that your link meets the requirements before adding it to the blog. You will add your link as normal, it just won’t appear immediately. Any entry that does not meet the challenge requirement or that does not follow our simple rules will not be published. If you are having issues with any other linking matter please mail me at the address in the side bar

Monday, 3 March 2014

This is the first of our new Mixed Media style challenges. We would love if you think a little outside the box for this challenge, and whilst each of these challenges have a theme - this one is Winter or Slap It On (please see below for full definition) they are also 'NO CARD' challenges, or at least this first one is.

The term 'Mixed Media' is a broad spectrum term covering many aspects of arts and crafts, it can include altering objects - books, boxes, frames, furniture - art journalling and book making and collage, and many more I can't think of right now!The items used in the creation of a mixed media piece are plentiful, and can include, buttons, broken jewellery pieces, all sorts of things that other people throw away and consider to be rubbish, paint in all forms, texture pastes, both proprietary and if you want to save money, home made from glue and talc, scraps of metal, fibres, filaments, chipboard, old photos to add or alter, pens, pencils, markers, crayons, chalks, polymer clays etc. etc. etc.

Yvonne has very bravely offered to host the first of these challenges, and she has come up with a nice loose theme for the first one. She would like to see something either related to Winter or Slap It On INVOLVING MIXED MEDIA, which basically means that anything goes, as long as it's mixed media. So if you cannot think of or don't want to make something Winter related then any other theme is fine by us. As you can see a lot of the team took literally to 'slap it on' and you can too, but you don't have to add everything but the kitchen sink to qualify!

We would love to see your album covers, canvases, altered art, upcyled, recycled, re-purposed or even brand new from scratch projects, but please we do not want to see cards in this one. Maybe you have an old coffee tin you want to give a makeover too, or you have found something fabulous in the charity shop and you have given it a new lease of life, or a new purpose.

We know it seems a little odd to be asking for Winter projects so late in the season, but we are not quite in Spring, and perhaps you want to celebrate the fact that Winter is on it's way out, or you can of course go down the 'slap it on' route instead.

With a prize of £12.00 to spend at your favourite Woodware Stockist, either in store or on line.

Woodware are a Yorkshire based family owned business, as well as distributing Dreamweaver Stencils and Stampendous Stamps we have a wonderful range of stamps designed for us by Francoise Read and Jane Gill. We also scour the world for new and innovative products for the crafty card maker, and have a great range of punches and tools of the trade, to find stockists in your area or to see the range visit the website www.woodware.co.uk.

Our design team are playing along with the challenge so check out our blog, which is there for inspiration at www.woodware.co.uk/blog.

As this is a broad theme choice, I have chosen to use winter colours, blues and whites with a touch of snow and frost [glitter] on this canvas.. The background, lives up to the slap it on mode, with layers of paint and stenciled texture. Carole

For me, the choice to 'Slap It On' was too good an opportunity to miss. I started with an A3 sheet of mountboard - and it all spiralled out of control from there....... Cindy

Well winter isn't inspiring me at the mo, I'm longing for Spring so I've gone with Slap It On adding papers, paints, texture paste, die cuts and metallic rub ons to this transform this papier mache box. Vania

The original color on this box is red, but I forgot to make photo.I colored her with few layers white paint, after that few layers light brown paint and used dark distress.After all this I removed some places from last layers and finally the result is this old vintage effect.

For the box cover I used a lot things...lace, handmade flowers, leaf from paper, pearls, roses , yellow feathers and so on. When everything was ready I painted some places from flowers and leafs with white paint.

This is my first project like this and for me was really big challenge and fun :)

My piece has a lot of mixed media.I used paper, fabric, lace, paint, snow tex, coloured PVA, multi medium, texture paste which I mixed with micro beads, also texture paste to make the clouds and trees which was done through a stencil to make the embellishments and all of it was highlighted with wax.

I am sure some of the team will have step by step photos on their personal blogs so please drop by and give them some love.

Because this is new to us, and a bit different to our normal style of challenge and you might need a little longer to be inspired, we will be running these Mixed Media challenges for one month instead of the usual two weeks. We will have a normal challenge two weeks from today (17th March), and this one and that one will run concurrently until 30th March

All links are moderated, please be patient whilst I get the chance to check that your link meets the requirements before adding it to the blog. You will add your link as normal, it just won’t appear immediately. Any entry that does not meet the challenge requirement or that does not follow our simple rules will not be published. If you are having issues with any other linking matter please mail me at the address in the side bar

OOOOPS Viv seems to have chosen a Top 6! Oh well, clearly she was spoilt for choice and couldn't whittle it down any further!

Congratulations to you all, please feel free to display our Winner’s badge or Top 5 badge on your blogs. Would the winners please contact me at the address in the sidebar stating the number of the challenge, the title of the challenge and which prize they have won in the subject line

The winners have until 16th March to claim their prize, after which time I am afraid the prize(s) will be forfeit. As we choose our winners, rather than having a random number thingy to pick them it's too difficult and time consuming to go back again and go through the entries to pick out new winners. Neither, sadly do we have time to chase the winners up.